Breadcrumbs

Raffinerie Heide – at home in Schleswig-Holstein and northern Germany
Committed to being good neighbours

Every industrial production operation generates heat, and we too produce excess energy, not all of which is needed for internal use. We use this exhaust heat to make our neighbours happy, as demonstrated in examples of our intelligent environmental policy.

Clever use of exhaust heat from the refinery

Way back in the 1970s our engineers came up with the idea of building a very special kind of pipeline, one which transported hot water rather than crude oil, directing it straight to Hemmingstedt’s municipal swimming pool. Since then the residents in our neighbourhood have enjoyed water heated to 28ºC free of charge, allowing the municipality to charge swimmers very low entry prices.

So everyone benefits from the intelligent use of the exhaust heat: local residents pay less, the municipality saves on heating costs, we need less coolant water and the environment benefits to the tune of 14,800 tonnes less in the way of CO2 emissions. Today we also supply all Hemmingstedt’s other public buildings with free heat.

District heating for our neighbours

A further example of our intelligent exhaust heat usage can be found immediately adjacent to our refinery:

on the 65-hectare Westküste business park, where resident companies heat their installations using our surplus heat. Vitarom uses the refinery’s exhaust heat to grow tomatoes and bell peppers in 18 hectares of greenhouses, for example.

As well as producing fresh vegetables, our plant is therefore also responsible for helping create a whole range of jobs in our immediate vicinity.

A third example comes from just behind our plant,

where the adjoining municipality of Lieth is supplied with steam from our heat exchangers, which they use to provide hot water and heating for every household.

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